AIDS - Acquired Indurate Deficient Science

That AIDS is caused by a sexually transmitted virus named HIV is anchored in the minds of most people, including scientists, as firmly as the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. And yet, there are compelling scientific arguments against this hypothesis and the treatments and policies derived from it. These arguments have been published in lay publications as well as in peer-reviewed scientific journals since 1987, but the AIDS mainstream remains in complete denial. Mainstream AIDS researchers, bureaucrats and so-called educators generally act like this challenge does not exist, and when they are forced to comment on it, they usually dismiss it using ridicule, ad-hominem attacks, appeals to scientific majoritarianism and empty claims that these kinds of ideas have been disproved long ago. They often justify their actions with the political argument that debate would confuse the public and the political decision makers.

To make the point that legitimate science is indeed being suppressed, it is necessary to examine some of the arguments made by AIDS rethinkers first. The following list is by no means exhaustive, or meant to represent a coherent argument; it is simply intended to introduce the reader who is unfamiliar with the subject matter to a few key ideas.

Fundamental ontological concerns

The Perth Group, a group of biophysicists and doctors at Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Australia, has made the argument that HIV has never been isolated according to the rules of proper virology, and that Gallo and Montagnier only detected indirect signs of viral activity and passed this off for isolation of a virus. The Perth Group emphatically does not claim that HIV does not exist, simply that it has never been shown that the biological material scientists call "HIV" is a unique retrovirus or infectious, or the cause of the diseases known as "AIDS".

The fact that most people in the developed world who have AIDS are also "HIV positive" is not an epidemiological finding, but a mere tautology, because "HIV positivity", whatever that means, is a part of the definition of AIDS. Paradoxically, this artificial correlation is not perfect, because AIDS can be diagnosed "presumptively", i.e. without "HIV-test". Acquired Immune Suppression with and without opportunistic infections and with and without abnormal CD4+ cell counts or abnormal CD4/CD8 ratios exists in HIV negative patients, but it is simply labeled differently - "Idiopathic CD4+ T lymphocytopenia". The medical establishment admits that it has no idea what causes this condition.

Peter Duesberg, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley has argued that HIV is not, and cannot be the cause of AIDS. In the view of AIDS dissidents, AIDS is just an arbitrary collection of symptoms, not a distinct disease, and there is no definition that is internationally agreed upon. In the US, the definition of AIDS has been expanded several times, the last time in 1993. Most people who have AIDS today have "AIDS'93" but not "AIDS'87", "AIDS'85" or "AIDS'82". By the NIH's own admission, "AIDS" is simply a "surveillance designation".

Prior to 1993, the definition of AIDS required clinical symptoms of serious disease. According to the 1993 redefinition of AIDS, clinically healthy but HIV+ people in the US have "AIDS" when their CD4 cell count drops below 200. This redefinition is absurd, since a variety of physical and even psychological conditions have been shown to cause very low CD4 cell counts in "HIV negative" individuals. Literally overnight, this change of definition caused the number of people with "AIDS" in the United States to double. From 1993 to 1997, the CDC still disclosed the percentage of AIDS patients that have AIDS'93, but not AIDS'87.

Starting with the year 1998, the CDC would no longer disclose which percentage of AIDS cases were "AIDS'93" but not "AIDS'87", and stonewalled all attempts of AIDS rethinkers to acquire it. David Crowe has described this scientific coverup as follows:

"By 1993 , the definition had been further broadened to include a non-disease as part of the definition of AIDS. Low CD4 (Helper T cell) counts or a skewed CD4/CD8 ratio along with a positive HIV test without any AIDS-defining illness could result in a definition of AIDS. By 1994 just over half the new AIDS diagnoses were in this category, and by 1997 about 65% of AIDS diagnoses were in people who, by definition, had no AIDS-defining illness and who may have been perfectly healthy. This might have started to become embarrassing for the CDC so, in the surveillance reports for 1998 and later, this statistic disappeared. When I, at the urging of Ukrainian statistician Vladimir Koliadin, wrote to the CDC and asked for the raw data that would allow us to obtain this information (and many other interesting statistics) we were told that the CDC, monster bureaucracy that it is, simply did not have the time or money to provide us with the information."

Since the CDC is withholding critical scientific data, there is no way to confirm or refute the suspicion that AIDS'87 no longer exists, or has become an insignificant fraction of total AIDS cases.

A theory that does not lead to correct predictions.

After twenty years, it is fair to ask how much predictive power the HIV theory has shown. The ultimate justification of a scientific theory lies in its predictive value. The HIV theory of AIDS theory has been a complete failure in this department.

The epidemiology of AIDS is not, and has never been the epidemiology of an infectious disease. Despite the constantly expanding definition of AIDS, the heterosexual AIDS epidemic in the developed world, universally predicted by experts in the 1980s based on the HIV theory, has never happened, even though the heterosexual population does not use condoms consistently. In the developed world, AIDS remains confined to the original risk groups - gay or bisexual men who engage in receptive anal sex with many different partners and drug users. Of the vanishingly small number of cases of allegedly heterosexual transmission of "HIV" in the developed world, many do not hold up to closer investigation and are subsequently reclassified into one of the established high- risk categories.

Not only have predictions that AIDS would become an epidemic and "explode" into the heterosexual population not panned out. The HIV hypothesis has also not lead to effective treatments. New breakthrough drugs invariably turned out to be useless, or worse, damaging (more on that below). The "hit hard hit early" strategy was a complete failure. Combination therapies based on this strategy failed to "eradicate" HIV from the body. Medical research based on the HIV=AIDS dogma has failed to produce a vaccine after 20 years of intense efforts. HIV vaccine candidates invariably turn out to be useless, as predicted by AIDS dissidents - or worse.

In a November 8, 2007 story, the SF Chronicle reports on the failure of yet another experimental AIDS vaccine. This one not only "failed to protect" volunteers from HIV infection, but may actually have "put them at higher risk"! The data were "disappointing and puzzling", and "unexpected" and "experts" "don't have definite answers". But the underlying assumptions remain unchallenged and unquestioned.

One realizes just how badly the HIV theory has failed to be predictive or useful, and how narrow today's scientific discourse is when looking at historical texts. Back in 1983, before the iron curtain of US government-sanctioned AIDS dogma had silenced dissent, the mainstream press used to cover different viewpoints of AIDS. What follows are revealing quotes from a March 28, 1983 TIME article titled Battling a Deadly New Epidemic.

"The new regulations, and much of the scare in general, are built on the notion that AIDS is caused by a transmissible agent. In fact, despite three years of research, there is no direct evidence that such a bug exists. CDC researchers have searched for a new virus with electron microscopes. They have injected laboratory animals with samples of virtually every body fluid and tissue from AIDS patients, including semen and blood. Not one animal has come down with the disease."

Why could a virus that, according to mainstream thinking, is replicating furiously inside the body not be seen by electron microscopy?

"But a majority of the experts believe that what was once known as the 'gay plague' will enter the general population. Because of their frequent contact with AIDS patients and blood, 'hospital workers will be next', predicts Dr. Roger Enlow, a leading AIDS researcher. "

Of course, this epidemic of "AIDS" among health care workers does not exist. And contrary to what mainstream apologists would claim, improved safety standards cannot account for this absence of an AIDS epidemic among health care workers. The package insert of the OraQuick "rapid HIV-1 Antibody test" states that "The CDC estimates that nearly one third of the estimated 900,000 HIV-infected people in the United States do not know their HIV status", and furthermore, that "In the U.S., it is estimated that 600,000 to 1,000,000 'needlestick injuries' occur each year."

By contrast, a CDC fact sheet states,

"As of December 2001, occupational exposure to HIV has resulted in 57 documented cases of HIV seroconversion among health care personnel (HCP) in the United States. "

This is a cumulative figure. It is not 57 cases in the year 2001, it is 57 cases ever, from 1981 to 2001. How can that be, with between 600,000 and 1,000,000 needlestick injuries happening per year, and almost one in 900 Americans being HIV positive without their knowledge? If we assume that 50% of all needlestick injuries occur after the needle has been in a patient, this means that on average, between 333 and 556 health care workers stick themselves with needles that have been in a HIV positive person every year. And that is making an assumption- that health care workers are so careful around people who are known to be HIV+ that needlestick injuries never occur with these patients. If HIV was truly transmissible by blood, we would expect annual cases of occupational exposure to be two orders of magnitude higher, i.e. we would expect exactly what was predicted 20 years ago, an epidemic of HIV infection among health care workers. That they haven't been "next" is one of the enduring predictive failures of the HIV theory.

The next quote is once again from the 1983 TIME article.

"Although Curran and the CDC maintain that a new agent is the most likely explanation for the epidemic, many other scientists disagree. "They've gone overboard," says N.Y.U microbiologist Alvin Friedman-Kien. "There are any number of possibilities." Frieman-Kien favors the theory that AIDS is caused by a combination of factors, perhabs including a new agent. "It is likely that there is a genetic predisposition," he says, since, according to one study, 63% of AIDS patients with KS have a tissue type that occurs in only 23% of the general population. Many researchers believe that a history of multiple venereal diseases and other infections play a role in suppressing the immune system. Such a history is characteristic of sexually active gay men and may help explain why they are prone to AIDS. The blood-related cases, which represent some of the strongest evidence for the transmissible-agent theory were sharply challenged at last week's conference. There is evidence that the blood byproduct AHF might cause immunosuppression in hemophiliacs, says DR. Joseph Bove of Yale University. The substance has been available only since the early 1970s, which may be why an AIDS-like reaction is turning up now. As for the transfusion cases, Bove pointed out that except in one instance, "We have been unable to make a definite connection between a recipient with AIDS an an infected donor." Said he: "I cannot conclude that the nation's blood supply is contaminated."

If medical research had operated in accordance with the principles of science, all of these alternative hypotheses would have been kept under consideration. Every competing hypothesis would have been confronted with new pieces of evidence, and the scientific community would have been given time to reach a consensus as to what hypothesis fits the data best. But that is not what happened, and the reason has nothing to do with science, and everything with politics and money. In 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo claimed to have discovered what the medical authorities knew to be the cause of AIDS all along: a new virus.

Science by press conference

Gallo's original Science papers, a relevant section of which is reproduced here, claimed "isolation" of HIV only in 30.2% of adult AIDS cases with Kaposi's sarcoma, and 47.6% of adult AIDS cases with opportunistic infection. This is the evidence based on which Gallo, with the blessings of Reagan's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, told the world press on April 23th, 1984 (two weeks before publication of the Science papers), that he had found the "probable cause of AIDS"!

The word "probable" was forgotten within days, "HIV positivity", as measured by Gallo's own test, was incorporated into the AIDS definition and research into all other possible causes of AIDS ceased. Everyone was happy- gay activists had their politically correct equal opportunity killer that would surely strike heterosexuals any time now, scientists like Gallo had billions of research funding coming their way and people with AIDS or at risk for AIDS had new hope that this new nightmare would soon be over. No one cared that Gallo had made an end run around the scientific method. Results were already accepted as true when they had not been discussed, critiqued or independently replicated. No such process was possible anymore in the "foregone conclusion" atmosphere created by Gallo's succesful PR stunt and the official imprimatur given to his alleged discovery by the US government.

It was later revealed that Gallo had stolen his samples from French researcher Luc Montagnier. A nasty fight about patent rights ensued between the US and French government, during which the central question of whether Gallo's results had any validity in the first place was ignored. Eventually, the two governments settled on a compromise, officially making Montagnier and Gallo "co-discoverers" of HIV. Gallo was later convicted of science fraud for his research in "HIV isolation" by a congressional investigation, the Dingell Inquiry. Unfortunately, the United States government was not willing to risk a debate on whether it had bet on the wrong horse and wasted almost a decade and billions of research dollars on a phantom. The report was soon forgotten and business continued as usual.

More details on Gallo's scientific misconduct can be found in Science Fictions - A Scientific Mystery, a Massive Cover-Up and the Dark Legacy of Robert Gallo by John Crewdson.

The missing animal model

In April 30, 1984, TIME ran an article titled Knowing the Face of the Enemy which makes the following revealing statment:

"While few scientists question the significance of the work of Gallo and the Pasteur Institute, one important piece of evidence is still needed to prove conclusively that HTLV-3 [the old name for HIV] is the cause of AIDS: it must be shown that exposure to the virus produces the disease. The next big task is to find an animal, preferably a primate, that will develop AIDS when infected with HTLV-3. Once this is done, a vaccine can be tested in the animal.

But this animal model remains elusive. No animal "infected with HIV" has ever developed "AIDS".

Foundational assumptions remain hypothetical

Over 20 years after Gallo's claim to have discovered a new virus that causes AIDS, and despite $100 billion in research thrown in that direction, conventional AIDS thinking still cannot explain how HIV supposedly kills CD4 helper cells, meaning that the foundational assumption of the HIV theory of AIDS is still unproven. An article titled HIV-1 Pathogenesis by Mario Stevenson, a professor of molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (Nature Medicine, July 2003, "20 Years of HIV Science") makes the following admissions:

"There is a general misconception that more is known about HIV-1 than about any other virus and that all of the important issues regarding HIV-1 biology and pathogenesis have been resolved".

"..it is debatable whether lymphocyte damage is due to the direct killing of infected cells..."

"Despite considerable advances in HIV science in the past 20 years, the reason why HIV-1 infection is pathogenic is still debated."

"Since the recognition of this syndrome in 1981, considerable efforts have gone into identifying the mechanism by which HIV-1 causes disease and two major hypotheses have been forwarded."

A mainstream paper published in 2002 flatly states that "the mechanism(s) by which human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes depletion of CD4 lymphocytes remains unknown."

Another mainstream paper, this one published in March 2006 (Grossman, Z. et al: Pathogenesis of HIV infection, Nature Medicine 12(3):289-295) admits: "The pathogenic and physiologic processes leading to AIDS remain a conundrum."

Refusal to consider alternative causes

AIDS rethinkers have proposed that one of the main contributing factors to "AIDS" among people in the developed world are drugs, both recreational ones and the very drugs prescribed to treat AIDS (including the alleged life-savers Protease Inhibitors) and other contributing causes. Some AIDS rethinkers also hypothesize that regular rectal exposure to semen and toxic lubricants is highly immune suppressive, and that the former leads to production of antibodies which cause "HIV" tests to be positive, thus explaining the correlation between receptive anal sex and "HIV" seroconversion.

Unfortunately, research in this area has been discouraged by the AIDS industry's dogmatic belief that "HIV" is the cause, the sole cause and nothing but the cause of acquired immune suppression associated with receptive anal sex. Research that could show otherwise has no chance of being funded in this kind of atmosphere.

The "original" AIDS-defining disease, Kaposi's Sarcoma, is most likely caused by chronic use of nitrite inhalants (poppers). The AIDS industry still denies this connection, but it now officially admits that KS is not caused by "HIV".

Such complex, multi-factorial explanations involving many different agents and risk factors would seem far-fetched for a clearly defined single disease, but they are entirely appropriate for "AIDS" which is not a disease, but a surveillance designation created by the CDC to track "mysterious" illnesses found in drug users, promiscuous gay men and hemophiliacs, a designation which has been revised and expanded several times as the alleged common cause "HIV" seemed to constantly change its mind about which symptoms it liked to cause in different kinds people.

Circular testing logic

There is evidence that so-called HIV tests are unspecific and therefore have some value in predicting disease and for screening blood supplies; however, they do not prove infection with a deadly sexually transmitted virus.

"HIV" tests are said to be extremely accurate not because they have been calibrated against a "gold standard" test (which does not exist), but simply because they have been designed by purely empirical means to react positive to the blood of most people who have been diagnosed with AIDS (who are all presumed to have HIV), and negative to the blood of most people who do not have AIDS (and are therefore presumed not to have HIV). The result were unspecific tests that react to a wide variety of medical conditions which were present in the early AIDS victims (but still manage to contradict each other). Put differently, so-called HIV tests are more likely to be empirical "at-risk for AIDS" tests, making the epidemiological correlation between testing "HIV positive" and subsequent risk of developing AIDS a tautology. To say that this correlation proves that HIV causes AIDS is circular reasoning. Test that were designed based on the assumption that people with AIDS have "HIV" cannot then be said to prove this assumption. Test makers admit in their own literature that "there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood".

Nowadays, the practice of treating healthy people who tested "HIV positive" with chemotherapy that causes AIDS-defining diseases has made the relationship between a positive test and development of AIDS a self-fulfilling prophecy for those who elect to undergo drug treatment.

The AIDS industry dismisses these criticisms by claiming that various HIV tests "confirm" each other. But this is just more circular reasoning. ELISA is said to be confirmed by Western Blot, but Western Blot is just a different way of testing for antibodies to the same proteins that ELISA tests for but have never been shown to represent a sexually transmitted virus that causes the diseases categorized as "AIDS".

Many people in low-risk populations test positive for at least one alleged HIV antigen, which by itself is sufficient evidence to support the claim of the Perth Group that none of the alleged HIV antigens are specific to "HIV".

There are different standards in different countries for interpreting WB; a positive WB in the United States may be a negative WB in Australia.

A text on the website of the Medical University of South Carolina illustrates the flawed reasoning behind HIV test validation.

It justifies the allegedly high sensitivity (true positive rate, the probability that a tests detects a condition when it is present) and specificity (true negative rate, the probability that a test is negative when the condition is absent) of HIV testing as follows:

Serum from 10,000 patients that were positive by Western Blot (the gold standard assay) were tested and 9990 were found to be positive by the new ELISA.

Here WB is already assumed to be 100% specific to derive a sensitivity of 99.9% for ELISA. But WB cannot be a "gold standard" test, hence this proof is basically circular reasoning.

The MUSC text continues,

The manufacturers then used the ELISA to test serum from 10,000 nuns who denied risk factors for HIV infection. 9990 were negative and the 10 positive results were negative by Western Blot.

This is supposed to show that ELISA is 99.9% specific, but a group of women that has by and large never been pregnant, is neither sexually active nor prone to lifestyle excesses is not a representative sample of the population. Specificity is not a constant, but a function of the population sampled, and depends on the presence of subpopulations that have conditions which increase false positives.

In fact, both ELISA and WB can be indeterminate; in that case, practitioners are guided to use "epidemiological and clinical information" for making a diagnosis. What this means is that a gay man or IV drug user is said to be "HIV positive" based on the exact same laboratory evidence based on which a married woman would be pronounced "HIV negative".

The Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society maintains a database of results from the mainstream AIDS literature that shows that almost any conceivable configuration of contradiction between various ways of detecting and measuring "HIV/AIDS" (ELISA, WB, "viral load", low CD4 counts or inverted CD4/CD8 ratio) is possible.

The definition of "health" of HIV+ people, "virual load" and "surrogate markers"

"Health", as defined by the WHO, is "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity". But when a person tests "HIV positive", that changes. Suddenly, one's state of health is a function of two numbers, the T-cell count and the so-called "viral load". The former is known to fluctuate even in normal individuals, while the latter number is thought to indicate the amount of virus in the bloodstream.

So-called "viral load" tests measure genetic fragements, not levels of active virus in the body. The fundamental ontological problem is the same as with "HIV antibody" testing- isolation of "HIV" has to precede validation of "viral load" testing. Nobel Laureate Karry Mullis, the inventor of the PCR method on which so-called "viral load" testing is based, has stated publicly that "viral load" tests are invalid.

"Viral load" numbers are not reproducible, not even when the same technology is used. A study reported that

"results for identical material sent to multiple laboratories provided viral load results varying from 3,849 to 1,291,635 (Roche Amplicor HIV-1 Monitor), from 63,750 to 205,500 (Bayer HIV-1 3.0 RNA) and from 89,000 to 360,000 (Organon Teknika NucliSens)]"

The antibody tests ("AIDS tests") and the methods for determining the spread of HIV in the human body ("viral load") seem to be flawed as well. The Frankfurt physician Juliane Sacher had a curious experience. She performed the following experiment: "I drew my own blood and put it into two ampules. One of them I sent under my own name to get tested for HIV antibodies, the other I sent under the name of one of my HIV positive patients for viral load testing to the same lab." A few days later she got the results: "my blood was negative under my own name, but the blood that was sent in under my patient's name had a viral load of 1800".

The lab told her on the phone that this wasn't particularly high and not cause for concern. It's quite possible to have errors of that magnitude.

This experience left Juliane Sacher with a bad feeling: "there are patients who fight to reduce their viral load by dozens or hundreds of copies per mililiter. How does that square with 1800 neither being particularly high, nor cause for concern?" After all, meds are increased when viral load can't be pushed below the detection limit.

Frau Sacher asked a different lab if they could determine the viral load of her own blood. The lab rejected her request, saying that it is not permissible to determine the viral load of HIV- blood." Sacher asks, "how can one count viruses if the antibody test is negative?"

There is no proof that so-called "viral load" is predictive of disease progression and clinical outcome. Studies that attempt to show the opposite are generally invalid because patients are never blinded to their own "viral load" numbers and are therefore subject to the "voodoo curse" effect that comes with receiving the bad news of a high "viral load". It is therefore of no evidentiary value that some (but not all) studies have found this number to be somewhat predictive of disease progression.

A major new study ( Rodríguez at al, Predictive Value of Plasma HIV RNA Level on Rate of CD4 T-Cell Decline in Untreated HIV Infection, JAMA vol. 296 No. 12, September 27, 2006) has shown that "plasma HIV RNA level" ( = viral load ) "predicts the rate of CD4 cell decline only minimally in untreated persons".

Based on these numbers, doctors treat otherwise healthy people with chemotherapy. Today's combination therapies of nucleoside analogues and protease inhibitors cause horrible, often life-threatening side-effects, such as kidney stones, vomiting, seizures, neuropathy, gastrointestinal disorders, excessive bleeding, and sometimes sudden death from liver toxicity. The drugs have to be taken around the clock according to strict schedules, destroying any quality of life that the patient might have had left. By the WHO's definition of health, these drug therapies destroy health. But since the drugs suppress whatever viral load measures, the AIDS industry can claim with impunity that people are "improving" on these toxic and deadly therapies.

This travesty of medicine is possible thanks to a 1987 FDA decision to accept measurements of surrogate markers in lieu of meaningful data. A AIDS.org factsheet states

HOW DO WE KNOW IF A DRUG WORKS? The FDA used to require trials that measured clinical endpoints before approving a new HIV drug. These trials analyze how many people get sicker, develop opportunistic infections, or die. However, these trials take a long time and are very expensive. A faster, cheaper way to test new drugs is by using indirect measures of patient health. These surrogate markers are usually laboratory values such as viral load or T-cell counts. In 1997, the FDA approved the use of surrogate markers for full approval of new HIV drugs.

The error behind this approach to drug testing is obvious. To substitute indirect for direct measures of health, one would first have to validate the indirect measures by showing that they strongly correlate with quality of life and life expectancy. In other words, one would have to conduct exactly those long-term trials that one was trying to avoid. The FDA never validated the use of surrogate markers in this fashion- it simply defined them as valid by political fiat.

The following is a pertinent article that appeared in the New York Times on 04/06/93.

AIDS Study Casts Doubt on Value of Hastened Drug Approval in U.S.
The recent summary of a European study that revealed no benefit from early treatment with AZT in HIV infection has also raised questions about the validity of certain tests that the U.S. government has used to hasten the drug approval process. The tests are known as surrogate markers, and are designed to be quick substitutes for the standard, time-consuming approaches traditionally used in predicting the benefit of a treatment. The "Concorde" study challenged the efficacy of using the CD-4 count as a surrogate marker for AZT among asymptomatic HIV-positive people. The Food and Drug Administration relied heavily on studies that found an improvement in CD-4 counts when it licensed AZT for early treatment of HIV. It also used the same markers in approving DDI and DDC, two other anti-AIDS drugs. However, the British government rejected applications to approve DDI based on a decline in CD-4 cell counts that the United States observed. Tim Peto, an AIDS expert at Oxford University, said the primary reason it was rejected in England was widespread doubts among European experts, including himself, about the validity of CD-4 counts as a surrogate marker for the clinical benefit of an AIDS drug. Dr. David A. Kessler, Commissioner of the FDA, revealed his faith in the validity of the CD-4 count. "It is a reliable predictor," he said, adding that his agency would examine the complete data from the Concorde study when it is published in a few months. The researchers in the Concorde study said CD-4 failed as a surrogate marker because although the CD-4 count increased by 30 cells among the asymptomatic HIV-positive patients who were given AZT, the rise did not indicate any medical benefit.

Issue #379, April 12, 2002 of the AIDS Treatment News gives more evidence that "viral load" is a meaningless number.

A study in Africa found that viral load was apparently reduced by almost two logs during acute measles infection in children. After they recovered from measles, the HIV viral load came back.(1) Interpretation was complicated by the fact that no baseline viral loads were available for the children before they came down with measles. Instead, researchers measured viral load in children who had been hospitalized with measles, and found it surprisingly low -- a median of 5,339 copies. This compared to 387,000 copies in the same children at a one- month followup, after they had recovered from measles. A comparison group of children with HIV but without measles or other acute illness had a median viral load of 228,000. This reduction was all the more remarkable since an illness like measles would be expected to raise the viral load if it did anything due to increased immune activation.

In science, failed predictions falsify theories.

Questioning the miracle drug myth

The sharp decline in absolute numbers of AIDS deaths in the mid-1990s is usually attributed to protease inhibitors.

But that decline was already in full swing when protease inhibitors were introduced in 1996/1997 and was therefore not caused by them. A study published in JAMA in 1994 (Differential survival of patients with AIDS according to the 1987 and 1993 CDC case definitions) showed that median survival time of people with AIDS'93 in the 1987-1991 period was more than 57 months, while the median survival time in the age of combination therapy is only 48 months, according to mainstream researchers. This suggests that the new drugs and/or the new treatment strategy of "hit hard hit early" decreased, rather than increased, the life expectancy of people with AIDS'93. This is all the more significant since the fraction of people with AIDS'93 but not AIDS'87 was steadily increasing till 1997 (the year in which the CDC stopped providing this data). Because of this, median survival time of people with AIDS'93 would have gone up even if HAART and "hit hard hit early" had been just as bad on averrage as earlier therapies.

But the AIDS industry and its media mouthpieces routinely make spectacular claims to the contrary, by comparing median survival times of people with AIDS'93 in the 1990s to median survival times of people with AIDS'87 in the late 1980s. For example, this Reuters story simply states,

"A study of the 394,705 Americans found to have AIDS from 1984 to 1997, and reported to the surveillance system of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, showed that median survival times rose to 46 months from 11 months during the period."

The educated CDC scientists who came to this conclusion could not possibly have been unaware that they were comparing apples and oranges. It is reasonable to surmise that their priority was the political correctness rather than the scientific integrity of their results.

By about 1993, the AIDS establishment had realized that all drugs that had been used since 1987 to treat people with AIDS were useless. A historical review by John G. Bartlett, M.D., a mainstream AIDS doctor, states,

"Tremendous pessimism prevailed among HIV-infected patients and their care providers [at the annual international AIDS conference in Berlin in 1993]. By this time multiple drugs had either been tested or were being tested including AZT, ddI, ddC, the tat inhibitors, compound Q, peptide T, dextran sulfate, and AL721. Clinical trials of these drugs demonstrated little or no benefit, and a sense of therapeutic nihilism permeated the annual international conference in Berlin, which is often viewed as the emotional low point in the history of AIDS treatment."

The decline in absolute AIDS deaths in the mid-1990s is more logically explained by the strong placebo effect caused by mass media reports on the impending introduction of alleged new miracle drugs and by significantly reduced recommended dosages of, or even discontinuation of treatment with highly toxic nucleoside analogues caused by the news that these drugs were ineffective. AZT for example used to be prescribed in doses as high as 1500 mg/day, while a typical dose today is 600 mg/day or less.

Almost all studies that allege to show the efficacy of AIDS drugs are a priori invalid because they use clinically irrelevant surrogate markers as explained above and because AIDS drugs are typically not studied against placebo controls (that would be unethical, according to the circular logic of the AIDS industry) but only against other drug combinations.

Even the few studies where real placebos have been used cannot be considered placebo-controlled because one cannot keep patients or doctors blinded to who is receiving highly toxic drugs with serious side effects and who is receiving harmless sugar pills. Those who experience side effects believe they "made it", which creates a powerful placebo effect in people who attribute near-miraculous healing powers to new experimental drugs. Conversely, those who do not experience side effects will be prone to despair, depression and a belief in impending inevitable decline of their health, which due to the strong connection between psychology and the immune system makes that a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A further problem is that patients may be ostensibly blinded to the drug combination they receive, but not to their so-called viral load. While we do not know what so-called viral load tests actually measure, it is quite clear that AIDS drugs lower that number. Since patients and doctors believe that "viral load" is predictive of disease progression, telling patients their viral loads will further strengthen the placebo/nocebo mechanisms just explained and thus make the appearance of clinical value of the drugs - or the predictive value of "viral load" - a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Liver failure caused by AIDS drugs is now the leading cause of death among HIV positive people. Liver disease, a signature side effect of AIDS drugs has been shown to be an independent predictor of survival in people who are being treated with these toxic substances.

A few years ago, drug toxicity was partially acknowledged as a serious issue by the AIDS industry. As reported by New Scientist in 2000:

Four years of "hit hard, hit early" HIV treatment may be on the way out in the US, as evidence mounts of the drugs' serious side effects

AIDS experts in the US are about to complete a humiliating U-turn when the Department of Health and Human Services launches its revised HIV treatment guidelines in January.

The revisions will underline the need to hold back from using powerful antiviral drugs until the immune systems of HIV patients show significant signs of decline. It reflects the view, long held by British doctors, that early use of currently available drugs may do more harm than good.

(..) For the past four years, leading American physicians have led the "hit hard, hit early" campaign which encouraged patients to take cocktails of powerful antiviral drugs in the early stages of the disease in the hope of preventing damage to the immune system.

British doctors were often ridiculed at conferences and in the pages of research journals for suggesting the drugs be used more cautiously, in case they proved too toxic for patients who take them for years or decades at a time.

But despite this humbling experience, the idea that currently recommended drug treatments for AIDS could still be doing more harm than good, or no good at all remains unthinkable to many in the AIDS industry, despite considerable overlap between officially recognized drug side effects and clinical symptoms of AIDS. The following table lists AIDS drug side effects which are also said to be clinical symptoms of late HIV infection.

"often difficult to distinguish adverse events possibly associated with zidovudine [AZT] administration from the underlying signs of HIV disease"

The unwavering belief of mainstream AIDS doctors in the life-prolonging effects of drugs that destroy the bone marrow, the liver and the digestive tract is all the more astounding given that protease inhibitors were approved by FDA solely based on David Ho's now completely discredited "hit hard, hit early" theory. It was universally acknowledged even by mainstream researchers in the mid-1990s that these drugs are way too toxic for long-term use. People were meant to undergo high-intensity chemotherapy for a limited time period to eradicate HIV infection completely, then go off the drugs. This rationale collapsed years ago, but instead of discontinuing use of this failed therapy, the AIDS industry is putting HIV positive people on HAART indefinitely.

When these people predictably develop severe disease, they are said to suffer from "HIV-related" health problems. Anemia caused by drugs is called "HIV-related anemia". Lipodystrophy, an abnormal, disfiguring redistribution of body fat caused by protease inhibitors is called "HIV-related Lipodystrophy". Serostim, a synthetic growth hormone that is prescribed to counter weight loss can cause "HIV-related" diabetes.

A recent news story reports on a study that shows that "people infected with HIV" (but actually people treated with combination therapy) face a significantly higher risk of developing heart disease. It ends with a mind boggling quote from the lead researcher that the research "did not prove that the cocktail itself was to blame" and that "the AIDS virus itself could be a cause", even though every last subject in that study had been treated with combination therapy including protease inhibitors, and "HIV" had never been known to cause heart disease in the decade before protease inhibitors were introduced. Is there anything this miracle virus can't do?

A paper published by French mainstream AIDS researchers (Viard, Jean-Paula et al., Impact of 5 years of maximally successful highly active antiretroviral therapy on CD4 cell count and HIV-1 DNA level, AIDS: Volume 18(1) 2 January 2004 pp 45-49) states

"It is more and more difficult to imagine anti-HIV treatments as life-long prescriptions, given the side effects described in the long terms, such as lipodystrophy (found here in nearly 60% of patients), metabolic disturbances, a possibly increased cardiovascular risk, mitochondrial toxicity and altered quality of life. In other words, the inconvenience of a very-long-term treatment may outweigh the benefit of maintaining the CD4 cell count at a high level, considering that treatment beyond 2 to 4 years will not result in a significant reduction of the HIV-1 DNA load."

"In summary, the data presented here show that HIV-1 DNA does not seem influenced by HAART after the third year and confirm that the CD4 cell count gain is less apparent after 18 months on treatment. Based on these observations, we question the benefits of a life-long treatment for HIV infection."

Short-term benefits of "antivirals" could be due to the fact that these drugs are so broadly toxic that they inhibit pathogens that often afflict highly immunosuppressed individuals. Several studies, In vitro activity of human immunodeficiency virus protease inhibitors against Pneumocystis carinii (2000) and In vitro and in vivo anticandidal activity of human immunodeficiency virus protease inhibitors show that protease inhibitors significantly inhibit pneumocystis carinii and candida albicans. Indinavir and ritonavir were shown to be as effective against candida as fluconazole, a leading antifungal prescription drug. This explains anecdotal (but never scientifically substantiated) reports of dying AIDS patients who experienced spectacular short-term improvement after starting HAART. The drugs, while otherwise useless and harmful, knocked out systemic bacterial and fungal infections.

A study published in The Lancet in 2006 (HIV treatment response and prognosis in Europe and North America in the first decade of highly active antiretroviral therapy: a collaborative analysis) confirmed again that AIDS drug treatments are ultimately useless:

"Virological response after starting HAART improved over calendar years, but such improvement has not translated into a decrease in mortality."

This result has been predicted by AIDS dissidents all along - if HIV does not exist, or does exist but is not the cause of AIDS, then drugs aimed at inhibiting HIV are unlikely to improve the prognosis of people with AIDS.

Alternative treatment approaches ignored

There is considerable anecdotal evidence that HIV positive people, especially those who have come in contact with alternative views of HIV and AIDS and do not believe that their HIV+ diagnosis is a death sentence, can live healthy, normal lives without taking pharmaceutical drugs. Unfortunately, the AIDS establishment has no interest whatsoever in studying this group of people. It is correct that so-called long-term non-progressors are being studied, but only as statistical oddities, or as beneficiaries of genetic mutation that renders "HIV" harmless, or the non-progressor impervious to its effects. No attempts are ever made to explore the connection between survival and refusal to listen to conventional AIDS doctors and their treatment advice.

There is considerable evidence that therapy with high doses of nutrients such as Glutathione, Selenium and Vitamin C improves the prognosis of people with "AIDS" tremendously. There is also evidence that due to the hostility of mainstream medicine towards alternatives, many patients do not share with their mainstream doctors that they are using alternative therapies concurrently. A 1998 study published in the The Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that more than 60% of patients who use conventional and alternative medicine concurrently do not tell their conventional doctors about it. There is no reason to assume that figure would be lower among HIV+ people. In addition, there is an unknown amount of people who hold prescriptions for antivirals, but instead of taking them, flush them down the toilet, rely solely on alternative care and then lie to their conventional doctor. Either way, false clinical data points are created that "treatment compliance" causes improvement.

The Myth of African AIDS

Even though "AIDS" requires a positive result on so-called "HIV tests", these tests are not generally performed in Africa. When they are performed, they are usually performed on pregnant women. The UNAIDS "AIDS epidemic update" of December 2002 states,

"In countries with generalized epidemics, this image is based largely on HIV tests done on anonymous blood samples taken from women attending antenatal clinics."

But pregnancy, as well as antibodies to a wide variety of infections that are common in Africa, are known to cause "HIV tests" to be false positive. Data on widespread "HIV infection" in Africa is therefore worthless, and would be even if HIV existed in the sense claimed by the medical mainstream.

African AIDS is usually diagnosed according to the Bangui definition, which says that you have AIDS if you have two major symptoms and one minor symptom. No "HIV test" is required. Major symptoms are weight loss, chronic diarrhea and chronic fever, minor symptoms include coughing and generalized itching. But these are precisely the symptoms of TB, malnutrition and parasitic infections, all widespread in Africa. Put differently, African AIDS is a new name for diseases caused by poverty and malnutrition.

Prof. Sam Mhlongo, MD, head of the Department of family medicine at The Medical University of Southern Africa, confirmed this interpretation at a conference on African AIDS held by the European Parliament in Brussels on December 8, 2003. He said::

"In the middle 50's and 60's, 50% of black children were dead before the age of 5. The causes of death were recorded as: pneumonia, high fever, dehydration and intractable diarrhoea due to protein deficiency. Today, these clinical features are called AIDS. Today in South Africa, TB is the leading cause of death and morbidity amongst Africans, but this is called AIDS. "

If this interpretation is indeed correct, then the epidemiology of African "AIDS" should be puzzling to mainstream researchers who are laboring to explain it in terms of the HIV theory. It is. For example, a news piece in Discover Magazine (July 2003, p. 32) frankly admits,

"Researchers still do not fully understand why the course of AIDS in Africa is so different from that in Europe or North America."

"Do not fully understand" is putting it mildly. Uganda should be depopulated by now, according to predictions made in 1985, but back on planet Earth, Uganda's population growth continues. "HIV infected" prostitutes who were predicted to be dead years ago are still alive, showing no signs of succumbing to "AIDS". Alarmist estimates of "HIV infection" in Kenya and other African countries have recently undergone a dramatic downward revision, and the only response of the AIDS establishment was, essentially, "our estimates can't be said to have been wrong because they were just estimates", and "reality notwithstanding, do not doubt that there is an epidemic".

The obvious, glaring contradictions in the epidemiology of the presumed "African HIV epidemic" lead anthropologist David Gisselquist (who otherwise does not question mainstream beliefs about "HIV/AIDS") to propose in 2003 that almost all African "HIV infection" is due to the use of dirty needles in hospitals, rather than heterosexual activity.

In 2007, the growing disconnect between computer projections and reality finally forced AIDS mainstream scientists to admit what dissidents had been saying for years - that "that they had long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic". A November 20, 2007 story in the Washington Post titled U.N. to Cut Estimate Of AIDS Epidemic - Population With Virus Overstated by Millions concedes that the presumed epidemic "has been slowing for nearly a decade" and that "the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global epidemic."

Logical independence of criticisms

The skeptical case against the conventional AIDS theory thus consists of many independent layers. Even if the Perth Group's fundamental criticism that HIV has not been isolated were refuted, and HIV shown to exist as a unique retrovirus, Duesberg's argument that HIV can't cause disease and the research of the Perth group that "HIV tests" are unspecific would still have to be addressed. And even if HIV were proven to be pathogenic, all of the causes of acquired immune suppression identified by rethinkers would still be valid as contributory causes, and could still be primary causes (with HIV just being a co-factor). And even if HIV were proven to be the dominant cause of immune suppression, that still would not justify use of the so-called antivirals. The evidence that these drugs do more harm than good, and that "AIDS" can be effectively treated with nutrients, stands on its own.

Conflicts of interest

But the AIDS industry and its allies are not interested in entertaining alternative theories of AIDS, or exploring alternative treatment strategies.

The pharmaceutical industry generates billions of dollars of profit every year from the sale of AIDS test kits, grotesquely overpriced AIDS drugs and secondary drugs to reduce the side effects of the primary drugs. Those billions of profits would turn into trillions of legal liability if it were proved that those AIDS drugs were worthless, or worse, that these drugs, not HIV, killed most people who died from AIDS in the developed world after 1987.

Medical journals and non-scientific publications alike (especially gay magazines) receive enormous amounts of money for AIDS drug advertisements, and have therefore no interest in publishing information that is critical of the AIDS-HIV hypothesis.

Mainstream doctors who prescribe expensive AIDS drugs (and get kickbacks from the pharma industry for it) derive their ethical justification from the belief that these drugs extend lives, not destroy them. They are not interested in theories that imply that they have been killing their patients. This entire industry, including AIDS charities and AIDS activists who are clamoring for cheaper drugs have committed themselves firmly and irreversibly to the HIV-AIDS hypothesis. Their credibility, their source of income and the very morality of their actions are tied to it. Their could not be a more perfect example of a fundamental conflict of interest.

AIDS - Science or Theology?

No one in the AIDS industry is therefore interested in a critical reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis. Scientists who dare to publicly question the HIV-AIDS hypothesis will find their career in shambles, themselves publicly branded as "AIDS denialists", compared to holocaust deniers and banned from communicating their research. One of these scientists is Peter Duesberg, a Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley and one of the world's leading experts on retroviruses. Duesberg published a seminal paper in 1987 that argued that HIV could not possibly be the cause of AIDS, and that recreational drugs are the most likely cause of AIDS. But instead of testing Duesberg's theory, the AIDS industry simply destroyed his career, cut off his funding and tried to move on as if nothing had happened.

But Duesberg's theory refused to die. By 1991, his arguments had made a sufficient impression on 32 biologists, medical doctors and other scientists to sign on to an open letter that was submitted to by Nature, Science, The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine. The letter consisted of the following simply statement:

"To the editor: It is widely believed by the general public that a retrovirus called HIV causes the group diseases called AIDS. Many biochemical scientists now question this hypothesis. We propose that a thorough reappraisal of the existing evidence for and against this hypothesis be conducted by a suitable independent group. We further propose that critical epidemiological studies be devised and undertaken. "

All four journals refused publication. In 1995, this Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis managed to get a letter published in Science.

The Virusmyth site, a leading online collection of dissident papers and information on AIDS, carries documentation showing how in 1993, Nature editor John Maddox manipulated the scientific process to give the AIDS industry an excuse to claim that "Duesberg has been debunked". Maddox published a paper by Ascher at al. that pretended to test the drug-AIDS hypothesis, but did in fact no such thing. Duesberg wrote a response to Nature which challenged the Ascher study, but it was denied publication by Maddox, on the grounds that asking inconvenient questions would confuse the public and ruin morale, and that it is impolite and outrageous for the proponent of a minority opinion to insist that the theory of the majority opinion actually be compatible with the evidence. In his editorial, Has Duesberg A Right Of Reply?, Maddox further justified his decision by casting Duesberg's disconfirming evidence as merely a list of challenges that the HIV-AIDS theory has not yet explained (but most certainly will, given more time).

Today, the dissident challenge to the HIV theory of AIDS still stands and is stronger than ever. Cornerstone assumptions and predictions of the HIV-AIDS belief system have collapsed years ago. The epidemiology of HIV or AIDS are not correlated, and neither HIV nor AIDS has the epidemiology of a sexually transmitted disease. Viral load does not predict CD4 cell loss. Antiviral drug treatments have not resulted in decreased mortality. The African "AIDS" epidemic is essentially a fabrication. The validation logic behind HIV testing remains circular. There are long-term non-progressors who refuse conventional treatment and still show no sign of AIDS long after 10 years. The HIV theory has thus produced nothing but predictive failures - the HIV emperor stands naked.

When confronted with the dissident body of thought and its proponents, mainstream AIDS researchers, doctors and activists usually react with anger, name-calling ("denialists") and empty claims that this challenge has been "debunked", when in fact it has never been accepted in good faith.

In 1999, ABC medical reporter Nicholas Regush described his experience with AIDS scientists as follows:

"I have worked as a medical science reporter for 30 years. I began this career at age 22. I've interviewed thousands of scientists for newspaper and magazine stories, radio and television productions, and books. I've met many scientists who at least try to keep an open and fair mind on scientific issues. I have also met many propagandists who think they're scientists. In all the time I've worked as a journalist, I've never come across a nastier group of people to interview than those propagandists who work in HIV research. "

It may seem harsh to call mainstream AIDS scientists "propagandists", but insider accounts confirm that AIDS politics trumps AIDS science. In 2004, Jonathan M. Fishbein, then a director of the Office of Policy in Clinical Research Operations at NIH's DAIDS was fired for blowing the whistle on scientific misconduct in a particular study of the AIDS drug Nevirapine. In a commentary published on Foxnews, Fischbein made the following statement:

"Until recently, I was the Director of the Office of Policy in Clinical Research Operations at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Division of AIDS. In that capacity, I was responsible for ensuring the integrity of government-funded AIDS drug trials by insisting upon good clinical practice and the rigorous oversight of all AIDS-related field work.

It was an impossible task. At every turn I found my efforts frustrated by a management system guided more by politics than by sound science. Nepotism and bureaucratic intrigue permeate DAIDS. Scientists are pressured to produce results at the expense of regulations whose purpose is to protect the safety, rights and welfare of study subjects, not to mention the preservation of scientific integrity.

For seven months, I learned of numerous instances of scientific and professional misconduct at DAIDS. I brought some of these to the attention of my supervisor as I am required to do by law. My vigilance was rewarded with a notice of termination and slander against my good name and reputation. Frustrated, I decided to step forward as a whistleblower in the hope that public exposure would bring about the needed change. That has yet to happen. Instead, NIH has worked fervently to suppress my allegations and delegitimize my credibility. "

Fischbein does not question the HIV/AIDS hypothesis.

The siege mentality of the AIDS establishment is exemplified by the following revealing statement made by Dr. Mark Wainberg, president of the International AIDS Society, at the closing of the 2000 conference of the Canadian Association for HIV Research in Montreal:

"If we could succeed and lock a couple of these guys up, I guarantee you the HIV-denier movement would die pretty darn quickly."

A November 2003 Nature news item (Declan Butler , British Medical Journal Under Attack as Dissenters Seize AIDS Platform, Vol. 426, 20 November 2003) contains all the typical excuses used by the AIDS industry to justify this unscientific behavior. In it, AIDS mainstream researchers admit that their goal is to prevent dissenting opinions from reaching the public and policy makers, to prevent the public and policy makers from becoming confused.

"BMJ (British Medical Journal) is under fire from AIDS researchers over a series of publications on its website. The postings in question make up a steady stream of unreviewed articles from people who deny that HIV causes AIDS. The dispute crystallizes the conflict between a journal's desire to experiment with open, unmoderated electronic debate and its fundamental obligation to readers to provide them with authentic information, researchers say.

If you search the BMJ's website for AIDS in all articles published over the past two years, the results are surprising. One in six of the top 300 returns are written by AIDS "revisionists". Add in responses to these missives, and more than one-third of the returned articles centre on that debate.

The disproportionate prominence of this discussion compared with other AIDS issues is angering some researchers. They point out that almost all of the articles concerned are unreviewed Rapid Responses’ electronic letters to the editor that are published within 24 hours, and are screened only to exclude libel or breaches of patient confidentiality.

David Rasnick, a leading AIDS sceptic, accounts for 46 Rapid Responses published since January 2002. Rasnick, a chemist who is a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, gives his affiliation as "a member of the Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel of South Africa". Another sceptic, Eleni Papadopulos- Eleopulos, a biophysicist at Royal Perth Hospital in Australia, has made 33 postings.

Researchers complain that the credibility conferred on Rapid Responses by the BMJ label may mislead policy-makers and members of the public over the debate. "It looks to the unsuspecting that this is solid stuff," says Simon Wain-Hobson, who studies AIDS at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Wain-Hobson is one of several AIDS researchers who argue that unfettered debate on the BMJ website offers revisionists an opportunity to punch well above their weight in a renowned journal. (..)

But whereas the BMJ's editorial board has unanimously endorsed this general principle, he says that as a result of researchers’ criticisms, he may raise the specific issue of AIDS revisionism with both this body and the journal¹s ethics committee. Rasnick says that he "applauds the BMJ for having the courage and integrity to allow debate" and questions why mainstream AIDS researchers complain so much "if their position is so secure". He says that he wants to know why "over 100,000 scientists and doctors, the 140,000 papers, and the $118 billion spent all combined have not come up with the proof that AIDS is contagious; that AIDS is sexually transmitted; that HIV causes AIDS; that anti- HIV drugs do more good than harm; or that AIDS is devastating and depopulating Africa or anywhere else." Most AIDS researchers strongly dispute these assertions.

By refusing open debate on the grounds that doing so would cost lives , the AIDS mainstream is of course begging the question. If the dissident position is correct, as the totality of the evidence suggests, then it is the mainstream belief system about AIDS that is costing lives.

Wainberg and John Moore, another leading AIDS researchers who is well known for his aggressive public advocacy that people who criticize the mainstream consensus on HIV and AIDS be silenced, published an op-ed in the Canadian Globe and Mail (online edition, July 4th 2007) titled AIDS and the dangers of denial. In it, Wainberg and Moore openly admit that they are on a crusade against the academic freedom of AIDS dissenters:

"People who argue that HIV does not cause AIDS have formed clubs, published newsletters and freely disseminated terribly harmful information on this subject through the Internet and other widely available channels. Attempts to shut down these sites or to prevent the dissemination of denialist literature are routinely dismissed on the grounds that dissenters have a right to express their views and that the public interest is better served by the defence of freedom of expression.

The latter sentiment appears in a letter to us — researchers on the front lines of the global AIDS crisis — from the provost and vice-president of a well-known U.S. university, after we complained that one of his faculty members had written a book based on an HIV-AIDS denialist position. The university should have shown leadership on the issue and dismissed the faculty member from her position, rather than hiding under the cloak of academic freedom."

The faculty member in question is Dr. Rebecca Culshaw, an assistant professor of mathematics at UT Tyler who previously worked in the mathematical modeling of HIV and AIDS. The woman's crime was to write a book on the subject that deals a crippling blow to the entire edifice of mainstream AIDS thought.

One can see why the high inquisitors of the AIDS cult would feel threatened by this kind of "harmful information". What would happen if more people had the dots connected for them? Culshaw herself gives the answer (p.70):

"When the HIV/AIDS hypothesis is finally recognized as wrong, the entire institution of science will lose the public's trust and science itself will experience fundamental, profound and long-lasting changes. The 'scientific community' has risked its credibility by standing by the HIV theory for so long.This is why doubting the HIV hypothesis is now tantamount to doubting science itself, and this is why dissenters face excomunication."

Further Reading:

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